A Little Knowledge

Following what Sissy considered a distressingly long double potions' class with the inept Hufflepuffs, the girls returned to the Aerie to drop off their books and things before going to the library. About halfway down the stairs they ran into Martin Dumbledore, almost quite literally. Sissy wrinkled her nose in disgust as she saw how dusty and dirty his robes were.

"Herbology?" she questioned.

"Yeah," he said, plucking at his robes, which gave off a small cloud of dust.

Olivia for one could not imagine what the first years had been doing ... unless they had been left alone in the greenhouse ... for an extended period of time ... and a dirt-clod fight had broken out. That was one theory at least.

"Professor Sprout must have really put you to work," commented Sophia, hiding a grin behind her hand.

"Yeah, it was disgusting," said Martin, who seemed to blush ever-so-slightly. "Now I have to change clothes."

"Do you want to meet us in the library after? We're looking into ... the thing we saw," said Corinna, lowering her voice slightly.

Martin seemed to show sudden interest at that suggestion and nodded fervently, "I'd love to. Would you believe that I haven't even had the chance to visit the library yet?"

"See you when you're ... more presentable then," said Sissy, attempting to hurry him on his way.

After the sound of his hurried footsteps on the stairs had faded, Sophia chuckled and commented, "He is most definitely one of us."

They weren't far from the library when a voice called out from behind them, "Hey, Bellew, have a moment?" It was Ignatius Ambrose.

Corinna stopped and turned, as did her companions, and she answered, "Of course." Her stomach flip-flopped as she realized that the new Quidditch captain was probably there on 'official team business' of some sort.

"Join us in the library when you're done?" asked Olivia.

"I'll only need her for a few minutes," Ambrose assured them with a smile that Sissy recognized as patronizing. For a fifth year, he was unbearably sure of himself and arrogant.

"Right," said Sophia, noting the antagonistic look that passed through Sissy's eyes like a storm. "Let's go," she told Sissy and Olivia.

"I wanted to let you know that practice starts next Monday. We've arranged to have the field from four until six in the evening and from five to seven on the weekends," he informed her. "Unless you've taken on academic responsibilities that would be in conflict," he added in a tone that let Corinna know that such responsibilities would need to be ... altered.

"Five to seven in the afternoon then?" she questioned to be sure.

Ambrose laughed and said, "No, I'm afraid not."

Her heart sank. Mornings were not the best time for her. And she knew it was going to be intolerably cold and damp in a few months. Not to mention that it would be nearly dark and that she simply wasn't a terribly experienced flyer yet.

"Saturday and Sunday?" she asked.

"That's right, Bellew. Can you handle it?" he asked.

"I think so."

"That's the spirit! We've had some rotten luck this term - no offense - so it's up to us to try and make our own luck now if we hope to have a shot at the Cup."

"I know, and Olivia would never forgive me if we didn't give Gryffindor a run for their money."

"Olivia?"

"Scarrow. She's absolutely dying to be a Beater," said Corinna.

"Better and better. We'll need one next year. Come spring, I'll see if we can give her a bit o' advanced training," said Ambrose with a wolfish grin.

"She'd like that."

"I suppose I should let you catch up with your friends now. It wouldn't do for us to lose two Keepers in one year because they let their studies go," said Ambrose, who seemed to be taking the loss of Clearwater in stride. Or perhaps he had wanted the captaincy that badly.

"No, it wouldn't do at all," Corinna agreed.

She couldn't quite decide if she liked the older student or not. He was polite enough. Neither more nor less so than most of the boys in their house. But there was something rather calculating about his demeanor, and she was more than half certain that his slightly rustic accent was a put-on to keep people off their guard. She knew that Sissy and Olivia both disliked him because he came off as condescending, perhaps even more so as a prefect, but they had all had thankfully little to do with him the year before. Maybe he just seemed a little too self-assured, even for an older student.

"I will see you next Monday then. Bring your broom and be on time," he told her.

"See you then," she said.

He gave a little nod and walked away in the direction of the Aerie. She was rather grateful that he wasn't going her way.

The library was nearly empty that afternoon when the girls arrived and selected a secluded table, well away from the desk of the middle-aged librarian Madam Pince. During the previous term the librarian had often given them distrustful glances whenever they were huddled over a book together. It was almost as though she could sense that they were delving into topics best left to older students - hexes and jinxes in Sissy's case, as often as not.

Sissy's best subject, not to mention favorite, was Defense Against the Dark Arts, formerly known as Practical Defense Against Sorcery, but it was well-known among her friends that she intended to take the advanced courses in defense when she reached sixth year, which were supposed to be the nearest thing to 'Dark Arts' being taught at the school, although the classes were mostly described as mostly theoretical magic and not practical application. While this fascination worried Sophia a bit, Corinna and Olivia were rather impressed with her grasp of the material from their first year, at the end of which Sissy had had the highest marks in the defense class.

And that is why when they began searching for books on strange creatures that go bump in the night, Sissy knew approximately where they should look for texts on that very topic. So far she had selected Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, the thirty-third edition, to help them in their quest, although she wasn't certain that the thing in question was indeed a 'beast'. Sophia, who already had an interest in magical creatures, was already pouring over it while Olivia and herself scoured the shelves for anything that seemed a likely source of information.

"Do you think it was a boggart?" asked Olivia quietly, careful to keep her voice low, taking a book on that topic from the shelf in front of them.

Sissy took it from her and returned it to its place.

"Couldn't have been. Boggarts don't like the open, and we all saw the exact same thing and were nearly equally afraid of it, except for you perhaps," Sissy told her with a sidelong glance.

"No, I was frightened too," said Olivia quickly.

"Definitely not a boggart."

"Banshee?" suggested Olivia.

"Wrong color," said Sissy, thinking for a moment. "And ... wouldn't it have screamed?"

"Point taken," she acknowledged.

"Ah, Dark Creatures of the British Isles. That might help us along," said Sissy, taking a thin leather-bound tome from the shelf.

"We don't have much to go on though, do we?"

"No, but we have our minds and a few clues. We can hardly expect more in this situation," said Sissy with a shrug.

They selected a few more books on the topic in question before returning to see if Sophia was having any luck only to find her engrossed in the article on dragons, which was quite substantial in that edition of Fantastic Beasts.

"Well, I hardly think we saw one of those," said Olivia, pointing to the full-color illustration of a Hungarian Horntail.

"Sorry," said Sophia with a slight smile before resuming her search.

Sissy gave Olivia one of the books they had chosen and opened one herself as they took seats at the table.

"Got one for me?" asked Corinna, joining them.

"And me?" asked Martin, who had come rushing up behind her.

Sissy was quite aware that Martin had no idea what he was asking for, but handed him, and Corinna, a book each nevertheless.

"This should be fun," he said pleasantly, opening his book with a smile.

Sissy noted with distaste that there still appeared to be bits leaves or something in his curly auburn hair.

It was nearly an hour later when Sophia looked up from Fantastic Beasts and sighed loudly. It had been a very interesting read as it was originally meant to be an upper level text for fifth or sixth years, which was one of several reasons why the library also had copies on hand, but it had contained no descriptions of beasts that matched what they had seen. That did not especially surprise Sophia as she suspected that the thing was human or nearly human.

Martin looked up from Dark Creatures of the British Isles as Sophia took another book from the stack that Sissy had found for them.

"Any luck?" he asked.

"Not a bit. At this rate I think we might try blindfolding Corinna again and hoping she has better luck," answered Sophia.

Sissy's eyes flashed with indignation as she acknowledged the comment: "Only if you think another cookbook would help."

She was referencing a particularly trying quest to find a lost potions' tome the year before. As Corinna always seemed to know things either before they happened or just out of the blue, they decided that a neat test of her ability would be to blindfold her and have her bring them the book. She returned with a cookbook specializing in the preparation of candied fruits and marmalades.

Turning beet red at the comment from Sissy, Corinna glanced up from her book and said, "I couldn't very well find something that wasn't there."

"I think I've got something," said Olivia, pointing to an illustration in her book on Dark Creatures.

Everything else was forgotten as they all huddled around the book and looked at a picture of a slender being in a long black cape and robes. His skin was very pale, almost chalk white, except for his lips, which were a definite red. As the picture moved, his mouth opened slightly to reveal two pointed fangs. But what cinched it was the eyes: they were a secretive, but shining red or perhaps a light maroon in color.

"A vampire," said Sissy nonchalantly as though in the light of day in the library of Hogwarts the image did not frighten her.

Sophia and Martin shuddered visibly as the picture bared its fangs again.

"But what would one of those be doing here?" asked Corinna thoughtfully.

"They say that in the Forbidden Forest ..." began Olivia.

"But the centaurs ..." objected Sophia, who had made something of a study of the forest dwellers.

"It says that they are clever," said Olivia, pointing toward a line of the caption, but keeping her finger well away from the picture.

"Only as clever as the humans, wizard or muggle, that they once were, unless it's one of the old vampires, from the days of legend and my father said ..." Sissy told them before trailing off as they looked at her.

"What?" asked Martin.

"He said that the old ones were all dead or in hiding deep in Eastern Europe."

"So this is just ... a human who got bitten?" asked Sophia.

"I suppose so, but they can be just as dangerous," said Sissy.

"There aren't many of them ... and they're supposed to be regulated by the Ministry," said Olivia, skimming the article further.

"But we all agree; that was what we saw last night, right?" asked Sophia, taking another look at the picture.

"Yes," said Corinna.

The others merely nodded and sat down again at the table.

"I told my father about what we saw," said Martin after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"What did he think?" asked Sissy.

"I'm not sure ... He wouldn't say what it was," said Martin with a shrug.

"But he believed you, didn't he?" asked Olivia, closing the book and pushing it toward the center of the table.

Martin thought about that for a moment before deciding that his father had taken him seriously, quite seriously, in fact.

"Yes," Martin nodded confidently.

"Then there isn't anything more that we can do. Perhaps, since it knows that we know about it, it will go back to the forest or something," said Sissy. "It's out of our hands now at any rate."

The five of them returned to the Aerie and the common room not long after that, realizing that they still had sufficient time to begin studying before dinner. At the top of the stairs leading to the domain of Ravenclaw house, Gentleman in His Study was penning something at his cluttered write desk with a rather old-fashioned and ornate quill. Martin was about to say the password when Sissy silenced him with a look and a gesture. They all stood there for a moment until the portrait figure glanced over his shoulder and smiled.

"Thank you, my dears," he said to the girls, putting down the quill and turning.

"We didn't want to disturb you," said Sissy coolly.

"Ah, just making a few notes regarding ... well, never you mind," he said with a charming smile. "Password?"

"Alexandria," said Olivia.

"Very good," he nodded before opening for them and going back to his work.

Once inside the common room, Martin was surprised to see how crowded it was. It seemed as though the better half of their house was present. A handful of older students were reading near the windows. Most of the first year boys were playing Gobstones in a well-secluded corner not too far from the hearth. Various students from other years were scattered across the room studying, reading, or talking in quiet clusters. David Clearwater was teaching Geraldine Graves, a third year student, a few of the finer points of chess.

The common room, had Martin realized it, was the center of life within the Aerie where students could spend time with their friends and house mates in both academic and non-academic pursuits. Except during the latest hours of the night and the earliest hours of morning, it was seldom unoccupied and often nearly filled to capacity with students and alive with the soft buzz of conversation.

"Go fetch your books and things and meet us over there," instructed Sissy, pointing to a pair of unoccupied window seats and a nearby armchair.

"Of course," he agreed.

Some minutes later Martin found himself situated in the armchair, which was rather comfortable, though its dark blue fabric had seen much wear. While waiting for the return of his friends, who were taking their time, he noticed a portrait of a woman with raven-black hair and blue-green eyes situated just above the hearth. She seemed to be watching everyone in the room, but they took no notice if her. When her gaze fell on Martin, her lips twitched into a slight smile and she raised a delicate eyebrow before turning her attention else where.

"I see that you've been noticed by Rowena," said Corinna, sitting down on the nearest window seat and putting her books, Charms' and Potions' texts, down next to her.

Martin started slightly as he had not heard her approaching.

"Er, Rowena?" he asked.

"Ravenclaw," she said, brushing her messy brown hair from her face. "She was one of the Founders of Hogwarts."

"Like Godric Gryffindor?"

"Yes, exactly," chuckled Corinna.

"My parents ..."

"I understand. You probably know all sorts of stuff about him, but nothing about the other Founders," she said.

"I know that Salazar Slytherin was ... evil."

"Perhaps," Corinna nodded judiciously, "but I wouldn't say that in front of any of the Slytherins nor in front of Sissy. Her mother was in that house, and she wouldn't be especially pleased to hear them badmouthed."

"Thanks for the warning," said Martin, looking at the portrait again.

"They say that Ravenclaw and Slytherin were ... in love when he left the school," commented Corinna. "But she stayed behind because she believed in the school and in the hopes and dreams of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff."

"Such a sad story," commented Sissy from behind them. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "But that's why they so many of us fall in love with Slytherins. The fanciful notion of their love remaining in the stones of the castle, long after they parted and eventually went to dust," she said.

"You're both going to bore the poor boy with this lovey-dovey nonsense," announced Olivia, who sat down on the empty window seat while Sissy sat next to Corinna and Sophia plopped down on the rug.

"Er, I don't mind. I really don't know very much about the history of the school," Martin admitted, secretly hoping that Corinna would tell him more.

Unfortunately, she had already opened her Charms' text and was reading the pages that Professor Flitwick had assigned them. Sissy was doing the same while Olivia had her history balanced on one knee and Sophia was beginning to pore over her potions' homework. Martin simply sighed to himself and pulled his Charms' book from his satchel, wondering if there were a book on the history on the school he might read in his spare time. If he had any, that is. He glanced at Corinna again and wondered how on earth she would manage classes and Quidditch.

"I would love to play ... eventually. But I don't know if I could manage it. Mum did it all right, but ... could I possibly follow in her footsteps?" he wondered as he gazed down at his textbook again. Martin didn't have an answer to that.

---